Kafka moving statue, by artist David Černy, photo by Jindrich Nosek (NoJin) from Wikipedia.
I have my own photo of this somewhere. But I have taken so many pictures that I have exceeded the capacity of my laptop and had to remove the older ones to make room for new ones.
Problems
What can you see and do for free in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic?
Is everything old? The hilltop castle is old. The Charles bridge leading to it is full of old sculptures. I love seeing historic things. But eventually a feeling of unease takes over, as if I am watching another era, looking at long-dead photos and sculptures created by long-dead people, not living now but living in the past.
Answers
Modern sculpture, even if the subject is old, helps you feel you are seeing a modern, living city, and supporting current culture.
Useful Website
You tube video of kinetic head of Kafka, each horizontal layer moving to create a changing vision of a giant head. Particularly suitable for a depiction of Kafka, as he wrote about Metamorphosis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc39FFMIzK4
Would you believe, another version is in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. Amusingly named Metalmorphosis.
Wiki says:
METALmorphosis is a large (7 metre, 13 tonne) kinetic sculpture of a human head, by Czech artist David Cerný. The sculpture is in the Whitehall Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it sits in a large reflecting pool.
The piece is executed in polished stainless steel. The sculpture is made of 40 layers articulated into 7 pieces that can rotate individually. Originally, the sculpture could spout water from the head's mouth.
A later and larger work, Head of Franz Kafka (Czech: Hlava Franze Kafky), a bust of Franz Kafka made of 45 tonnes of steel, is in Prague.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photogrpaher, researcher, author, speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.
